Auditory cues determining the perception of the size and speed of rolling balls

This study investigates the auditory perception of the size and the speed of rolling balls. Prior experiments showed that subjects can discriminate differences in size and speed of wooden rolling balls on the basis of recorded sounds. Recorded sounds were manipulated by merging the temporal characteristics of one sound with the spectral characteristics of another. Perception experiments showed that when subjects had to choose the larger ball from two sounds, they had a preference for the spectral content of a large ball. If subjects had to choose the faster out of two sounds, they preferred the spectral content of a small ball, and, to a lesser degree, the spectral content of a fast rolling ball. The temporal cues in the sounds were of minor importance for the range of stimuli used in this experiment, possibly because sounds with much amplitude modulation and bouncing were excluded from the experiments.